Just Another Piece in the Game
by The Temple of Time
Summary: Alira has spent the last fifty years trying to forget her ten years in Europe. Now after being welcomed back by the very man who told her to never return to Hogwarts those old memories were being dragged back into reality. Old and feeble her transfiguration teacher asks her for any memory that could help him understand Lord Voldemort before the inevitable battle to the death.


Alira lined her finger along the rim of her glass, making an eerie, high pitched note calling above the drum of chatter. Her drink was, for the most part, untouched and the bartender, a good-looking woman, was starting to watch her. Alira couldn't blame her. Even for the Three Broomsticks Alira was a weird one. Her skin was pale, her hair was pitch black with fluorescent blue streaks through it and her eyes were orange. Pure orange. She didn't even have pupils. She stared intently at her wine glass before taking a slow sip. When she set the glass down she spoke in a soft but cool tone. "You better have a good reason for dragging me out here, Professor. You know how jumpy my family gets when I have to leave them."

"I assure you," Albus Dumbledore said just as softly but with a hint of worry in his voice. "This is a very good reason. Please, follow me to the school."

Alira smirked and left a gallion on the table. She took the glass with her as she followed the professor out of the bar. "This place has hardly changed in the last fifty years. There are a few more people around than before but still very much the same."

Dumbledore didn't respond and Alira's smirk widened. She could feel that he was under extreme stress. She could also sense the illness slowly creeping through him. it was that reason that he was allowing her inside the school again. She remembered the last time she saw him and he'd promised that she'd never see the insides of Hogwarts ever again. At the time she had been so scared she did everything she could to get out and get home. Now she was not so young. Now she was not so naive. Dumbledore would not have allowed her anywhere near the grounds if he didn't need something from her. And not just anything. The only reason anyone in England would have asked her to return to be to ask her about Tom Riddle. She was the closest thing he had to a best friend while they were in school together. It also explained while they were walking to his office in the middle of the night while no one was around.

Once the two of them were safely inside his office Dumbledore closed his eyes in apparent exhaustion. "You're getting old, professor." She blinked and set her wine glass down. She pulled out her wand, waved it once and the liquid disappeared. From her bag she pulled out a package of thicker liquid. Blood. "My company back home has perfected a synthetic blood suitable for my kind. We're working with the vampires to see if they can survive on it as well. If they can then we'll be moving into the public eye. One of my father's friends is a donator to a hospital and can get our synthetic blood into human trials. We can save thousands of lives and make millions at the same time. Is than not a human concept?"

She pulled out the cap and poured herself half a glass before replacing the stopper and slipping the blood back into her bag. Dumbledore's piercing blue eyes watched her as she raised the glass to her lips and sipped. This time, when she drank, her face and eyes filled with life. The neon blue streaks in her hair seemed to glow suddenly as she swallowed. There were few things that truly frightened Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, but this girl was. She always had. All the way back to her school days. He protested loudly against her coming to the school in the first place, but at the time it was not his call. It was a diplomatic arrangement that needed to be sorted out during the affairs after the first World War and before the Dirty Thirties. It was agreed that Alira would be taught at Hogwarts and be the only magical creature other than a wizard to be allowed to hold a wand in the world when she came of age in 1938. Dumbledore needed to know every aspect of the relationship she had with the boy Tom Riddle from the moment she met him on the train to the last day she saw him six months before Dumbledore told her to never return to Hogwarts ever again.

Alira knew all of this, of course. But she had every desire to toy with him a little. He was old and she was still plenty young. "What do you want, Professor? It must be something important if you allow me in your office again."

"I've been collecting information on Tom Riddle. Now he's more commonly known as Lord Voldemort."

"I really hate that name." She sighed. "What do you want to know? You know about everything that happened at school. You were annoyingly observant all through my years here."

"I need to know the details. Things that happened in your personal lives that I would not have been able to see while you were in other classes or in your dormitory. What happened after the two of you left. you lived with him a short time, did you not?"

"No," Alira scowled and set her glass down. She didn't like this dragging up of old memories, even though she expected it. She stepped to the window and leaned against the frame. She looked out across the moonlit grounds. "I stayed at his place for a little while, or he would stay with me for a while... but it was never for very long. And it was never permanent. We only talked about moving in together when he found out what I was."

"So he did find out."

"In the summer before our sixth year. I don't know how but I wasn't really surprised. Tom had a way of... getting inside your head. Even if you're a master at legilimency he always seemed to know what you thought. He knew there was something I was hiding and he dug until he found it. Only the gods know how many times he put his life in danger before he found it."

"Please, Alira. In order to be able to defeat him I need to understand Tom before he became Lord Voldemort. You were the only close thing he had to a friend."

"For the longest time I thought we were." She whispered. "Tom and I... well... we shared a lot."

She pulled out her wand again and examined it. It was an odd wand and made out of birch rather than oak or hawthorn. Pure white. She had to get it in her own country as every wandmaker in Europe had refused to make her one. Slowly she put the tip to her temple and extracted a thin strand of silvery of memory. "I assume you have a pensive?" she said in a hushed tone.

Dumbledore nodded and pulled out the stone basin. Alira hesitated before lowering the memory. The image of the Hogwarts express swam to the surface. She didn't need to look at Dumbledore before diving into the abyss of her own memory. Memories she'd rather forget for good.


End file.
